Never Let Me Go reviewed by Simon Howard

Never Let Me Go (12A) 103 mins
Director: Mark Romanek
Cast: Keira Knightley, Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield
2 stars
By Simon Howard
Following the huge success of Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2005 dystopian novel (which was this year sent to every first year student at Newcastle University), Mark Romanek has brought this moving story onto the big screen with an all-star cast.
As children, Ruth, Kathy and Tommy spend their childhood at a seemingly idyllic English boarding school. As they grow into young adults, they find that they have to come to terms with the strength of the love they feel for each other, while preparing themselves for the haunting reality that awaits them. Without wanting to spoil the film, it is made clear from very early on the twist which means that for the three main characters there will be no happy ending- they have been produced to provide donor organs for transplants, and will die before they can fulfil their potential. It is essentially a sci-fi movie dressed up around a romance.
The film is by all accounts a very graceful and faithful adaptation, which is dealt with in a poignant way. The spirit of the novel is captured well, but in a sense this is part of the problem for many viewers, who will not have read Ishiguro’s work beforehand. One aspect which does stand out is the excellent contrast between the stunning landscapes and panoramas compared with the bleak and monochrome colours- visually it is a thing of beauty.
Garfield, having produced a great performance in ‘The Social Network’ again demonstrates his considerable acting talent and outshines his two more experienced co-stars. Keira Knightley is perhaps the weakest of the three main leads, and this is far from her best performance. The three child actors who take up the story for the first thirty minutes all excel and look to have big futures in the industry, and set the tone well for the final two thirds when Mulligan and co. take the lead.
This is a film which does require a lot of thinking about, as the secrets and details are revealed slowly but surely. What’s missing is a spark of life or a jolt of the unexpected — something beyond tears — to puncture the falseness of a film world, which obscures the tragedy that the three characters, by their nature, cannot express.
Verdict: An altogether unsatisfying experience, which raises more questions than it answers.